Slashdot Mirror
Heroes of Might and Magic III Demo Released
mackman writes "Head on over to Loki Games' Web site to waste a few hours with the latest hit (but let me finish downloading it first!). " Warning: It's 93 megs. But there are several mirrors up on the site. I've played this game before - it's a huge blast to play. Have fun!
Oh, no. You think that GETTING the Amulet is your trial? Don't you recall your instructions?
That's right, chummer. You have to get the Amulet -and bring it back-. And the bearer of the Amulet, uhm, can't teleport. You gotta hoof it back up all fifty levels, with the Wizard of Yendor all over your ass and with no help from your god.
Not that you're done yet. Remember the rest? You gotta bring the Amulet -to your God-. So you'll need to take a short jaunt through the four Elemental Planes -- bring your pickaxe!
Heh. But I'm not done yet. Nothing's ever fair, is it? Welcome to the Astral Plane, home of the three High Altars of the Gods. And their attendants. And you know what? The other two Gods really AREN'T the least bit interested in your God gaining ascendancy over all things. Get ready to kick some Archon butt.
And who invited THOSE guys? For -no apparent reason-, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse want to kick your butt too, and you can't make those bastards stay dead. Fun fun fun.
And you thought -one- Wizard of Yendor was bad news...?
So fight your way back up through all fifty levels of the dungeon, traverse the Elemental Planes, and fight your way through that warzone they call the Astral, puzzle out which altar your God owns -- don't botch this one -- and offer the Amulet.
And THAT will be the last thing your character does -- except for the gloating. Lots of gloating.
Happy hacking...
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
I've set up a mirror at
ftp://templestowe.res.cmu.edu/pub/lokiga mes/
I notified Loki of this by email, and told them if they request me to take down the mirror, I will.
Till then, enjoy.
Regards,
matt
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
As a programmer, when I moved from Windows to Linux a couple of years ago I increased my productivity 100-fold.
I doubled it by not having the system crash from under me, and I increased it by 50 times by not having any great games to distract me.
If this trend continues, I almost might as well move back to Windows; I mean what's the point of dealing with logging in every few weeks when I reboot for a measly double productivity gain?
Oh, you kids today have it so good... I'll tell you one thing, young man, when I was young we didn't have all this fancy-schmancy games with, like, graphics and surround sound and all these silly effects. We had NETHACK, that's what we had, and I'll tell you one more thing, we LIKED it, and we didn't want anything more, that's for sure.
I mean, who decided that UNIX should have games, anywyay? Back in the old days, all a SysAdmin would ever want was a LART, rm, and the occasional luser and that's all we needed to have good, clean, wholesome fun.
*grumble*mumble*
oh...my back's killing me...
*mumble*
Maybe it's just me, but I think game designers are starting to ask a bit much. That's a hell of a long download time for people who are still largely on modem connections (and not very fast ones -- I haven't found anyone in my area who can get me better than a 28.8 speed, and I'm waiting until I move before I look at DSL).
Maybe it's just hitting me because last night I did a full install of Freespace 2 and had that top out at 1.2 GB of disk space -- and here I thought I'd be set for a long time when I got a 13 GB drive for my PC...
Jay (=
I have a fast mirror. My link tops out about 900 kbytes/s. Check the realtime monitor for current conditions.
http://www.ryans.dhs.org/heroes.html
Realtime server status
Ryan Salsbury
It's funny. I SHOULDN'T like this game. No 3d graphics. Cardboard cutout figures in the fight scenes. Yet this game had something that other games lack. It's weird but every game I play is like a story that tells itself. Even on the same map. It also has a bewildering variety of creatures and random events which really add to it.
The music is also fantastic. The tower and desert land music is the best. Also the amount of detail they put into regular sounds is also quite good.
For me it was totally the atmosphere of the game which put the hook in me. Castlevania3 is only game which can compare in terms of excellent atmosphere.
That being said I've heard that the music was better for HOMM2. Also I have the AB expansion pack, the Conflux (elemental) race is a mediocre addition (at least they didn't include the "forge" race *shudders*), but the new campaigns and creatures made it worth recommending for HOMM3 fans.
Anyway don't take my word for it. Download the demo and find out for yourself.
I picked up the commercial version of this about a month ago, and have spent far too many hours locked in its entrancing spell.
Technically, this is a solid achievement. I haven't had a single crash. It looks and sounds as good as in Windows.
And gameplay is superb. It isn't dramatically different than HOMM2, really - but that's not much of a complaint. This is, no doubt, one of the premiere strategy games on the market, regardless of platform.
Another nice note - if you do the full install (which is, I grant, huge), you don't need the CD to play. You could probably play it remotely over X, if you want to. It put an icon in KDE under games, which I thought it should do. I installed it as root, and can play as myself - which is better than some things, like Star Office.
Kudos for Loki for an exceptional port of an unusually addicting game. I'm becoming decreasingly interested in even keeping a windows box around for any reason.
-- Kate
This post interested me because it speaks to my interest in pricing models ...
...)
drig suggested buying the game, not downloading it (and at 90 megs, it is a huge download!). If you ever hear Free / free software impugned with the increasingly silly rhetorical question "But how can that stuff stick around? How can anyone make money off it?" you've got one more data point to fling. Even on a fattish pipe, most people are not interested in downloading 90 megs at a time, but pop in a disc and 90 megs is no sweat.
(Of course, this could go either way -- in 3 years, will you be on a DSL2* line with no metered charges and 90MB is three minutes whistling? Or will you be on a clogged cable modem loop with by-the-K download charges and a meter outside the house? I certainly hope the first trend is winning
CD-burners may not be DVD-RAM, but they certainly constitute a great way to pass around big files, and for a well-done manual, brand assurance and support, I think Loki is offering great deals for Linux games.
Whee!
timothy
*Strictly hypothetical. Not real. Restrictions apply. See local dealers for details. Not availabile in all areas, terms and conditions apply and are subject to change without notice or obligation.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
This is probably my favorite game in recent memory. It ranks up there with the best of the mid 80s Commodore 64 games: Archon, M.U.L.E. (anybody remember that one?), Pool of Radiance, Temple of Apshai, and Ultima IV. PC games suck, except for id, Origin, and New World Computing.
:)
Heroes of Might & Magic is one of the best series of games I've ever seen. And I've been playing computer games longer than some Slashdotters have been alive.
On a scale of 1 to 10, where Ultima 8 is a 1 and NetHack is a 10, I would give HOMM3 an 8.5 (9 with the additional scenarios).
Because they've already written the program once already? Personally I hate it when I'm writing something (software or text) and I lose today's changes through either my own stupidity, or some software screwup, even if it's only like, 15 lines that I've lost. I've already put all my creative blood and sweat into doing the thing that I'm going to have to do all over now. I've already done it perfectly,(or not... even so it was good enough) and now I have to remember how I did it, or reinvent it. And if I don't think it's all that important, it's simply not going to _be_ redone, and the entire project gets set aside, never to be finished.
Then you also include the fact that most gamers who use linux at home dual boot anyway. (porting office apps is a different thing, especially when a computer is being used almost exclusively for a small number of applications at most workplaces.) This does not impress the boss or the accountant, especially when it comes to the cost of porting the game.
I suspect the reasons that games get ported to linux at all are things like "because the programmer really wants to," or "because there's not much to change," or "because the boss has been fooled into thinking there's a really big market for linux games." The first reason is the reason Doom was ported at all. Management didn't think it was a good idea, and didn't really want the programmer doing it to waste his time.
---
I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
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I recieved a copy of Heroes 3 for Christmas.
Soon after my wife and daughter got a chance to play it, they demanded accounts on my Linux box.
After playing Quake III Arena, she wants Linux on HER box!
A seriously adicting game. I would enjoy it more if they fixed the AI player bug involving regenerating armies... But even then, it is still a hell of a lot of fun to play and worth the money. (Loki did a fantastic job on the port.)
I can't wait to see what they do with Alpha Centari.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
I think that linux gaming is now where PC gaming was in the late 80's/early 90's - B.W95 (Before Windows 95). Too many different computers, graphics possiblities, etc. Microsoft came and established a standard API for graphics, sound, and PC games took off. I think SGI open sourcing OpenGL will really help establish a graphics standard for linux games.
Just give it time...